Bridgewater Stone Church marks 100 years with memory quilt

To celebrate its centennial, Bridgewater United Methodist Church sewed a memory quilt made up of 40 panels created by members of the church explaining what it means to them.

By Rebecca Hymanrhyman@wickedlocal.com

Every panel tells a story of how the "Stone Church" in Bridgewater has been woven into the fabric of the community for the past century.For the past year, the Bridgewater United Methodist Church has been celebrating the 100th anniversary of the opening of its beautiful granite "Stone Church" at Cedar and School streets.And to mark the occasion, the congregation has sewn a memory quilt, made up of 40 panels created by different members of the church explaining what it means to them."We were trying to capture 100 years of history," said the Stone Church's pastor, the Rev. Pat Miller Fernandes.One panel depicts the choir.Another the marigolds a past member grew for the Sunday school children.And yet another the soaring art glass window that dates back to the church's construction, a familiar School Street landmark.There is a photo of young Abbie Lawrence of Bridgewater, who founded the church when she was just 21 in 1874, and another of her husband Ferdinand C. Gammons, a prominent businessman who funded the construction project 40 years later.There's a panel commemorating Jenny Chisholm, a deaconess in Bridgewater in 1903 before the church allowed women pastors. But Chisholm felt a calling to serve, so she found a way, Fernandes said. Chisholm, who had a magnificent voice, frequented Boston hospitals to sing to the patients. Her descendents still attend the Stone Church and still sing, in the popular country music band the Chisholm Bros.There's a panel with the famous quote from Methodism founder John Wesley: "Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can."And there's a panel with the simple words, "family, friends, music, memories" by church member Lynn Piquette, whose great-grandfather was the Stone Church's first pastor, the Rev. James N. Tranmer."That one really does epitomize who we are," Fernandes said.The panel Fernandes made herself is a tribute to a trio of past members and prominent Bridgewater citizens, Matt Striggles, Chauncey Cole and Iva Lutz, with the passage: "No greater love than this, to lay down one's life for friends."They lived those words, true friends of the church, of the community and of their fellow human beings, Fernandes said.The quilt was the brainchild of Sue Ladd, who has attended the Stone Church for more than 30 years and has been sewing since she was a little girl, just old enough to thread a needle.People stitch memory quilts to mark important birthdays, and this was certainly an important birthday, said Ladd, who joined the panels together to create the finished counterpane.Each panel is wonderful in its own right, and they come together to create something bigger than themselves, Fernandes said."I think it's beautiful and very meaningful. My favorite part is listening to the stories as people tell me what the panels mean to them," Fernandes said.The first service ever held in the Stone Church was on June 10, 1914.June 29 will be the culminating event of the year-long celebration.Bishop Sudarshana Devadhar —the bishop for the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church — will be in attendance. In a neat bookend, the bishop serving in 1913 attended the groundbreaking for the Stone Church, Fernandes said.Devadhar's sermon will be "We want to see Jesus" — the same sermon preached on June 10, 1914 at Bridgewater Methodist Church on that very first day in the building that has meant so much to so many town residents for the past 100 years.